


Seaside Encounter

by PrairieDawn



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Cephalopoid, First Contact, Math, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: While waiting for a part for a broken down shuttle, Pike and Spock encounter a curious alien.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 27





	Seaside Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Pike, tentacles, comparison
> 
> Fluffy, low stakes first contact fic with a member of a stone age (?) culture
> 
> Another written all in a day and barely revised piece.

Pike adjusted his filter mask, took a moment to glance to the side to ensure that his new science officer’s was adjusted correctly, and popped the shuttle hatch. His feet came down on obsidian-black sand. The sky above them was gold-green, the vegetation washed up on the beach and clinging in low lying swatches to the jagged shoreline was a deep, ruddy purple. They kept above the line of waves, which was little effort, given their oily, almost gelatinously slow rolling. The waves left pinkish smears behind that sank slowly into the sand.

“A desolate landscape,” Spock noted, though he kept his tone as neutral as always.

Pike nodded. “Hard to imagine anything could live here.”

The air was breathable for short periods, if unpleasant, the rain acid, but not spectacularly so. Their masks would protect their nose and eyes from sulfur compounds present in the air--naturally occurring tear gas. “It would be more prudent to remain inside the shuttle.”

“Don’t you ever just want to walk on the surface of a truly strange, new world?”

“I admit this planet’s appearance is unusual.”

“Engineering will have our replacement parts fabricated in a few hours. No harm in taking a look around as long as we stay in sight of the shuttle.”

Spock nodded, then walked up to the water’s edge, holding his tricorder aloft. “It would appear there are no lifeforms of sufficient size to damage the shuttle near the shore.”

“I know, Lieutenant. I used the shuttle sensors before I popped the hatch. There’s nothing in the lagoon here any bigger than a walrus.”

“Walruses are not small.”

Pike chuckled. “No, they are not at that.” His foot kicked a bit of detritus, a smooth shell with a hole bored in the center. “Looks artificial, doesn’t it?”

Spock returned to examine it. “Perhaps.”

“There are mollusks on Earth that leave marks that look a lot like that. They bore a hole through the shell and eat the animal from the inside.”

There was something curious about the deep purple, fibrous mass that rested near his find, dotted with still more of the perforated shells. He was about to lift a section of it to examine closer when Spock batted at his arm. Pike looked up.

Something was sliding out of the ocean near the shuttle. It was a deep, charcoal gray color and roughly the mass of a man. It drew itself along the shoreline by several tentacles--they didn’t stop moving long enough for him to count. The creature superficially resembled an octopus, though its body seemed much firmer, more capable of moving without the buoyancy of water. It raised those tentacles to probe at the shuttle’s landing gear.

“Captain, if the creature contacts the undercarriage it could be shocked or burned.”

“And if we get too close it might mistake us for dinner.”

Pike took a couple of steps forward, hoping to startle the creature back into the water before it injured itself. As he did, he could see that what had appeared to be seaweed clinging to the creature was in fact a satchel wrapped around two of the--he counted again--six tentacles. All six limbs sported glittering bracelets that tinkled and rattled as the alien moved.

“Our friend here is intelligent,” Pike noted.

Spock immediately walked to his side, holding a piece of the fibrous material from the beach. “It is a fishnet,” he said, displaying the mesh with its evenly spaced knots and shells tied to the edges as weights.

The creature froze, turning its head, or what was probably it’s head, from side to side. It threw itself forward and slithered slowly toward them. Spock took a step backward and pulled out his tricorder. At least he hadn’t pulled out his phaser, Pike thought. It was a bit early in this First Contact situation to pull out the weapons.

While Pike was still figuring out what to do, the creature crept one long tentacle out to poke at his boot. “Get down low,” Pike told Spock. He sank slowly to his knees, then sat down on the cool sand in the shade of the shuttle.

“Is that wise?” Spock asked.

“We’ll look less threatening. And if anything goes wrong, you can stun it.”

The creature fell still whenever he or Spock spoke. When they fell silent, it continued its careful explorations of Pike’s boots and the fabric of his pants, then drew a rubbery tentacle over the back of his hand. 

Another tentacle ventured up his pant leg and he shooed it out. The creature’s twin taps on his knee were so subtle he missed their significance until Spock withdrew from the creature’s careful poking at his hand. Again, two light taps on Spock’s knee, and no more attempts to touch his hands.

He caught Spock’s raised eyebrow and nodded, then drew in the sand, a little cartoon of himself, Spock, and the creature. They, the creature had become they the moment it had made an unambiguous attempt to communicate, scrabbled in the sand for a few moments, and brought out a tentacleful of pebbles, which they arranged in front of Pike and Spock, two separated by a space and two together.

There was something familiar about that pattern. Spock responded with a handful of pebbles of his own, arranged into two pairs and a group of four.

“I think we’re going to have to call this fellow Tweel,” Pike said, chuckling. He fished around in the sand for more objects to group. Two, three, five, seven.

“Sir, I suspect your pattern will tax the alien’s capacity for abstract thought,” Spock said, while Tweel carefully pushed eleven pebbles into a pile, counting them with the tip of a tentacle for good measure. Their next offering was made to Spock. One, one, two, three, five. Spock quirked an eyebrow and piled eight pebbles at the end of the row.

Tweel gathered the pebbles and tucked them into their satchel, then made for the water. Pike stood to follow, with Spock on his heels. “Perhaps he is going to retrieve companions?” Spock wondered aloud.

But Tweel didn’t reenter the water. Instead, they scooped a pebble into a tentacle and flipped it out over the water, where it skipped several times before disappearing. They held out a pebble to Pike.

Pikes shrugged at Spock, took the pebble, and gave it his best effort, which wasn’t bad, but couldn’t compare to Tweel’s. Tweel tossed the next one to Spock, who caught it neatly and flung it out over the water. It traveled farther than the cephalopoid’s had, but skipped fewer times. After a few repetitions of this activity, during which Spock improved and Pike did not, Tweel disappeared back into the water.

“Captain, the Prime Directive would suggest that we minimize contact in order to avoid contaminating this creature’s culture.”

“Indeed it would, Spock. So we won’t give them the secret of warp travel. So far we’ve established that we all like to throw things and have a grasp of eighth grade math.”

“Indeed.”

They returned to the shuttle to lean against it and watch the waves, keeping an eye out for the return of Tweel or others of their species. About a half hour later, Tweel returned, carrying a frame carved out of white shell with several strings of beads across it. A musical instrument?

Tweel flicked the beads from one side to the other along the frame. Spock’s eyebrow hid itself in his bangs. “Fascinating. I believe the device is an abacus. Tweel, as you call him, uses base six arithmetic.”

At that moment, the shimmer of transport let him know that their replacement part had arrived. “You keep Tweel occupied. I’ll get this installed and then we can head back, send a xeno team down to pick up where we leave off.”

“Very well, Captain.”

It took perhaps another forty five minutes and not that much colorful language to install the replacement exhaust manifold. When Pike finished, he found Spock and Tweel engrossed in an animated, but entirely silent conversation that combined pebble pushing, drawings in the sand, and hand and tentacle gestures. “So what have you learned?” 

“Tweel is familiar with geometry and trigonometry, the concept of models and maps, lives in a community of roughly forty individuals on the continental shelf two kilometers to our northwest, and has made numerous requests to me to provide the distance to my home, which I have declined to answer.”

“Go ahead and answer that one if you can. It will make it easier to get them to move away when we’re ready to take off.”

“The creature has returned to the water every twenty minutes for a minimum of five minutes. May I suggest we leave in eleven minutes when they return to the water?”

“Fine, fine.”

Pike settled onto his haunches to watch his science officer chat in math with what was clearly a kindred spirit. When Tweel took their leave of them, Spock dug a little into the sand, then stood and brushed himself off. “I believe I made it clear that we are leaving.”

They returned to the shuttlecraft. “I’m glad you made a friend, Spock,” Pike teased.

“An acquaintance, perhaps.” He looked out the viewport at the water while Pike lifted off and made to rendezvous with Enterprise.

“So, what did you leave your acquaintance?”

“I do not understand what you mean,” Spock said quietly.

“I saw you put something in the sand where you and Tweel were sitting.”

“Nothing of significance. A polished tiger eye agate I had on my person.”

Why would Spock be carrying around polished stones? Pike wondered. Was it a Vulcan thing? He wanted to ask but didn’t want to endure stony silence from his science officer for the remainder of their trip. “Not a local stone,” Pike said instead.

“No, I suppose not.” Pike wasn’t certain the expression on Spock’s face was quite a smile, but it was as close as Pike had seen, and he had Tweel to thank for that.


End file.
